


The Bridge is mine

by august_the_real



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-14
Updated: 2015-01-14
Packaged: 2018-03-07 13:37:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3175098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/august_the_real/pseuds/august_the_real
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes it's not good to explore the psyche. Sometimes you don't like what you see.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bridge is mine

The Bridge is mine  
by august (mrsrosiebojangles@gmail.com)

 

I know he won't join us. Maybe that's why I ask. Maybe that's why I  
kiss him. Maybe that's why I do what I do.

Who knows?

Sometimes it's not good to explore the psyche. Sometimes you don't  
like what you see.

\---

She comes to me late at night.

She holds my gaze in briefings during the days. She talks to me in the  
messhall over lunch. We discuss worm holes and gravametric distortions  
on the bridge.

At night she transports to my quarters. I am surprised, yes. I didn't  
expect her to take me up on the offer. Sleeping with the Captain is  
not usually part of my duties. Sometimes, yes, but not always.

She tells me, afterwards, that it has been a long time -- years, since  
she has been with anyone. I wonder briefly if she was even with me,  
tonight.

I ask her why she only comes at night. I know the answer, of course  
(one can hardly take a captain on the bridge of her ship) but I ask  
all the same. She rolls to face me and says quietly "I never sleep."

\---

I know he is lying to me.

I knew from the first day. All the signs were there: the convenient  
escape, the implausible story. I knew, we all knew, and we kept that  
knowledge.

I turn this knowledge over in my mind. He talks of his home, of his  
people and I start to wonder which words and real, which are not. He  
speaks of finding a irl in the containment tank, but his words are  
hollow.

I smile and nod, and agree that it must have been terrible. It  
shouldn't be his easy to play this game with him.

\---

Three months ago my teams were inspecting a plasma-refining vessel. We  
found a family of telepaths hiding in one of the extraction tanks.  
There was a child. Very young. She'd been inside it for days, barely  
able to breathe. When I lifted her out and set her down on the deck --  
she thanked me.

I tell Janeway this; deliver the lines like a masterful actor. I pause  
at the right moments.

What I didn't tell her, what I failed to mention, was that my soldiers  
had cheered when we lifted her out of the containment tank. Rape is  
not an uncommon tool of torture.

My sexual interests have always been a little more ... refined. I  
turned away.

\---

He tells me the story about the child in the containment container. It  
reminds me of a time, years ago now, in a Cardassian prison. The smell  
of sex and death and inevitability surrounded me. I remember what it's  
like to be 'lifted out' of that containment tank.

He tells me that after he lifted her out of the tank, he could think  
of nothing else.

It is strange that we would have that in common, in a way.

\---

I sometimes think I would have liked to have met her in a different  
way.

If she were not gaharay, if she were not harboring telepaths....

I would have stayed on this ship, but her mind strangles me. I know  
when I touch her, when I kiss her, when she holds me in her, that she  
thinks she is better than me. I read her database and know that should  
she get home, she will be tried for her breach of regulations. I read  
her database and know that she - like me, is a killer.

I kiss the back of her shoulders and know that she can't see it that  
way. That in her eyes, only one person in her bed is a murderer.

\---

Part of me hopes that we are wrong. Part of me hopes that he will  
leave Devor; that he will stay on board.

Most of me knows that he won't. That he can't.

That if he stays, he could not share my bed. It wouldn't be right.

\---

"The bridge is yours." I tell her.

She smiles. I know now that it always has been.

I want her, even now. As we discovered the false readings and the  
vegetables, I could see her sitting quietly. My plan falls apart  
before me, and she sits quietly. In bed, I had mistaken it for  
passivity. I had lain on her body, she had whispered "harder".

The same feigned deference I see now. The quiet, cold glint in her  
eyes.

I have never been more aroused.

\---

"The bridge is yours." He tells me. I smother a smile. It has always  
been mine. Even in death it will be mine ("Captain Kathryn Janeway of  
the Federation Starship Voyager"). No one can take that away. (Who  
could give that away?)

He bids me farewell for the second time. He does not kiss me this  
time.

(Memories of hands bracing bodies, of hot lips, of slow slow trails of  
hair on skin.)

We are courteous and cordial. He wishes me a good journey and I think  
in some respects, he is sincere. It reminds me to stories from the  
twenty first century. Soldiers fighting for days in mud and blood,  
breaking to play soccer together over Christmas.

I watch his ship leave.

\---

It is possible to live with violence, but not in it. I do things that  
I should not accept. I do them because I have to, but I do not let  
them become me.

She tells me it is a fine distinction. She tells me that actions make  
a person, not intention.

Maybe she is right.

But I am the one who can sleep at night.

\---

The bridge is mine.


End file.
